Invasion (19 page)

Yanking jeans on, just doing up the button to keep them up, I pocket magazines, then hit the floor, elbowing across the carpet, rolling for speed, angling the sight at the doorway, until I’m shielded by the frame and have clean line of sight to the top step.

I wait, steadying my breathing, experiencing the amazing lull of the zen calm washing through me, even the heartbeat in my ears dulls to nothing.

Biding moments, I wait for his protective headgear to reach above my focus, seeing the instinctive sweep of his rifle barrel, the red pilot light attached to the scope a beacon to his eye. He’s got night vision standard on his helmet, and I have one chance only to drop him before he gets my heat signature.

Eye to the sight, breathing out slowly, I squeeze the trigger, popping a single round into his cheekbone. Just before his head turned in the visual sweep to my location he left his cheek vulnerable, and a head shot is the only way to fell these guys. They’re wearing so many bulletproof layers they make wedding dresses look understated.

My cull falls backwards, rattling a cacophony down the stairs, only to be replaced by the next asshole.

Again and again I cap them without needing to engage machine fire. One bullet per invader.

My brain is whizzing with questions like: how? Did I have limited artillery and have to perfect this skill, taking out the enemy using no more than the absolute minimum? Did I do it for silence and stealth? Was I a sniper?

When two heads pop up together, now trying to back each other up after five of them hit the grizzly end of metal to the brain, I engage rapid fire.

Dum dum.

Two shots. Two bullets. Economy is my middle name.

The recoil is sinking into my shoulder like I’m made of titanium, like I’ve done this my whole life. It’s so easy and effortless that I’m wondering, again, who the hell I am.

When those two barrel down the steps like the other five, I know I have approximately eight insurgents left to cull. What did they honestly think was gonna happen? You infiltrate my den, you gotta anticipate a counterstrike.

I’m assuming they have backup outside, covering the rear exit point, maybe even a few more covering the garage and perimeter.

Shit, what did I ever do to invite this shitstorm?

They’re not coming to me, that means I’m going to have to go to them. Wriggling along the wall, shadowing the landing as flat as I can, avoiding line of sight, I make it to my Glock and knife, ramming them both into waistband and pocket, then roll and crawl back along the landing in the seam of floor and wall, until I’m at the second bedroom. I think of it as Carly’s room cos it’s got her knobbage bed in it.

From this angle I can see into the kitchen if I raise my head. I’ve got the foyer, lounge and living room entry points covered, looking for the telltale movement of slipping shadows, or a scope light.

They’ve got comms. I’ve got diddly squat.

I can hear perfectly, my ears didn’t even block when they blew up the front door. The conditioning I’ve lived through has given me the edge, years of prep I gleaned from night sweats and shrapnel. I’m thinking I got the tattoos to cover the scars of the IED which took out the vehicle I was in, the one I dream about over and over on endless loop.

Surely they have people who can pick locks? I entered this abode with nothing more than a few metal shafts at my disposal. They’ve got the might of the United States of America behind them and they had to use brute force? Makes no sense. Not one iota.

Seven red dots hit me at once, and I react, rolling into darkness. Rushing to the cupboard I yank it open, slip inside, then find my way in the pitch darkness of a closed closet. Efficiently I move the ceiling board, pulling myself into the cavity above it, then replace it.

I need to get to the other side of the hallway, to the bathroom. They’ll be rapidly moving on my last location, and I have to get behind them without being made, and in double time.

The cavity is cramped, my size working against me, but I monkey and spider across the beams, grateful the bathroom has a manhole for the water heater access.

Silently lifting it, I lower down, hanging all my weight on my fingertips, finally finding a positive to being 6'5. I found out how tall I am when I went to buy jeans. The drop to the floor is negligible and I’m grateful again that I’m barefoot, silent and stealthy.

The M249 is too bulky to employ in the cramped space of the bathroom so I gently lay it down, removing the Glock from my pants and sidling up to the doorway, snatching a glimpse beyond.

Vic A just entered the bedroom I was in, his six behind him. Just the two of them.

I have victim B’s neck as my only kill shot from this angle. I don’t need night vision motherfuckers! I’m the bogeyman. I have no clean shot to the head so I aim for the mass of neurons at the top of his spine leading to his head, aiming up at a low angle, popping a single shot to sever the connection, spinning metal petals directly into the cranium.

Victim A pivots to face me the second there’s muzzle flash and the discharge report. “Bogey at your six motherfucker,” I hiss, capping him in the perfect shot; between the eyes.

He doesn’t fall backwards, his knees fold and he compresses like an accordion, face planting the floor in front of him like he’s converted to Islam.

Five left.

“David Hearse! Surrender!” commands from the kitchen.

The world is populated with fuckwits.

I have his location and I can set my heart on knowing he’s hidden behind the fridge because it’s exactly what I would do. If I can get to the laundry room I can sneak up behind him, but he’s covered by four comrades.

That means the lounge, sitting room, downstairs loo, foyer, and the kitchen, all contain a bogey.

It’s their objective to retrieve or destroy me, that means we’re going to have a standoff. I’m not dumb enough to expose myself. If they want me they have to advance up the steps, or monkey bar up the banister - hanging out of sight, which still leaves them vulnerable because they’ll be stupidly exposed when they have to vault over the barrier onto the landing.

When climbing you’re not aiming. No commander would approve that. Nope, they’ll come up here together, or not at all. Four men, all focussed on my heat signature. I’m bound to get grazed or hit in that. The odds are not in my favor. The good news is they don’t know I have a machine gun, they’ve only heard singular shots. If I engage automatic I can mow them all down in seconds.

The fastest draw wins.

My blood is thrumming as I pick up the military issue machine gun again, loving this impending confrontation. It’s a test of skill, of survival. I have a babe up here and you randy fuckers aren’t getting close enough to see her naked titties.

Sure as shit, four domes of headgear bob just beneath the top step while they prepare to ambush me. I remain hidden in darkness, but it won’t help me shit the second they lift their heads.

Instead I brace myself for pain, every sense taut, scrambling for data on my enemy, doing recon with scent, sound, gut, chi.

I preempt it. With a spooky foreknowing I anticipate the exact moment they advance, my finger on the trigger before my brain registers that they’re advancing and I’m gunning them down with rapid fire.

My instincts outrun my coherence, and the sudden silence of ceasefire is eerie. Blood redecorates the wall beyond the staircase, oozing across treasured photos of Carly’s deceased parents.

Anticipating the coast to be clear I pad silently and quickly down the steps with Glock in hand, leaving the M249 upstairs, sweeping the house room to room, using the alternative entrances to the interlocking zones.

One man sits waiting, hunched behind the dining table just beyond the open plan kitchen, his rifle aimed at the first bedroom, where Carly will emerge if I don’t get a move on.

His vigilance sucks. How did he make the cut?

I’m quiet as an ice cube sliding across the floor, encroaching on the infiltrator, knowing he’ll sense me the moment I’m two feet behind him.

It’s who we are. You
know
, the nape hairs are like aerial warfare sirens. Hunting knife in hand, I attack, pouncing with my long stride, hooking his chin in my palm, yanking his head up, and slicing his throat open ear to ear, keeping a tight grip until the struggle for life flees.

After doing the fastest half-naked perimeter sweep in snow ever, I find the empty ‘Removal Van’ they snuck here in. It’s packed with equipment and surveillance gear, the driver dispatched with the same ease as me opening the fridge to grab a beer. The neighbors are all away, it’s normal apparently. Carly told me this area has the well to do residing in it, and the wealthy don’t stay in fourteen inches of snow and five hours a day of sunlight, they go to summer homes, escaping the misery of midwinter.

Because I have this intel I deployed a hollow point from my Glock into the back of the driver’s head. He was so focussed on the house he didn’t spy me sneaking through the hedge and into the still open rear door of his van.

No neighbors to report the ruckus. We’re safe, for now.

Knowing all operatives are dispatched, I have the luxury of looking around. And I find my file!

I have a file!

Ink can tattoo the skin

Love cannot be this superficial

It transforms the organism

It is a parasite

David:

S
kimming the file while the wintry wind freeze-dries my skin, I’m faced with a photo of me in a black suit, white shirt, thin black tie, hair so perfect I look like a Wall Street douche.

• Name: David Hearse

• DOB: 14 December 1982

• Hair: Brown

• Height: 6'5

• Weight: 264lbs

• Designation: Classified

• Parents: Deceased

• Siblings: None

• Marital Status: None

• Residence: One57 Manhattan: Penthouse

• Account: Lloyds Bank

• Balance: $342 078 025.63 (£259 887 352.33 B.P.S)

• Commander in Chief: President Markham

• Handler: The Matriarch / codename Queen

• Status: MIA

What the fuck? Who the hell am I? US special forces or MI6? MI5 even? A double agent? I don’t feel British, not a bit. If I was British why the fuck would it say I’ve done four tours for this country. Two in Iraq and two in Afghanistan?

Flicking through pages and taking mental images of each to assimilate as much at once in fast succession, I was secret service, special ops, my military service abruptly ends, years later I show up on a peacekeeping mission when I mysteriously vanish, a big ‘defected’ question mark next to my most recent photo. It’s taken from a distance, confirming I’ve been under surveillance.

My list of assets and funds is impressive. There’s no way in heaven or hell I earned that much cash aiming a gun for my country. Looking at the blatant evidence it seems I’m dirty. It’s what I’d think handed this information on someone else.

I have seven homes around the world, offshore accounts and a multitude of investments from silicone valley to diamonds in Somalia.

Did someone pay me off? Buy my silence?

There’s a
top secret
thumb-drive here, and I have to look, because I fucking have to. Plugging it into the portable iPad looking device, the pages automatically load, with huge writing like the CIC forgot his spectacles at home.

I have sensitive intelligence on Patrick Murphy and Gareth Smith, under investigation for supplying the Priory of Fidai intel on heads of state and government, which is why so many politicians have recently met grizzly ends.

They think I’m knocking off politicians?

Why the hell would I do that?

Amnesia offers a priceless gift. The man with this condition has nothing left to lose, and now they threaten to steal that solace.

Urgency comes on strong and I run back to the house, my toes so numb I can’t feel them, my skin rough with goosebumps. I’m not invincible after all. Way to burst my ego.

Laughing I shake my head, feeling simultaneously jubilant for reclaiming an identity that actually makes me somebody, someone who should never have had to forage like a savage in the wild, hunting the meager wildlife still venturing out of warm burrows in order to subsist. I’m obscenely wealthy and I’ve been squatting in a lonely lady’s basement.

Why her? It still plagues me.

But we’re compromised. I have to go. NOW.

Those dudes have a commander and when no one checks in backup’s going to be dispatched. I have a ten minute head start - if I’m lucky. If I want to live I gotta go, and in a moment of clarity I know exactly where I’m going. It’s not too far, a ball-hair away from Canada. If I keep to the woodland ridge, using the foliage as camouflage and the cold to hide my heat signature, I should be able to make my escape undetected.

Inspiration bitch slaps me. If I take Mark’s bike and head onto the woodland trail, and help myself to one of the helmets with attached night vision, I can make my way in complete darkness without using lights. It’s perfect, and it’s not like that team will be needing their equipment now.

She’s not the target, I am. The best way to keep her safe is to leave her behind, and therein lies my conflict. Every atom of my sentience screams brutal warfare at the idea of risking never seeing her again.

Entering the house, hurdling over the fallen, my long legs gobble the distance, hurtling up steps three at a time, charging to the bedroom to recover Carly.

She’s sitting in the middle of the bed, hair in disarray, eyes so wide that I can taste the persecution coming from her. “They’re dead,” I assure her.

“What did they want?” she whispers, still being quiet, as if there’s another van down the road with long distance listening mics aimed at us.

“Me,” I admit, rushing her, snatching that sweet face in my grasp and mushing her cheeks, kissing her half to death. “I gotta go.”

“Go?! Where?!”

“Looks like I’m wanted for questioning, military stuff, classified.”

Debating, fighting my demons in my chest until my heart feels tight and under pressure, I sit next to her, absently holding to her silky thighs, massive hands devouring skin with every caress.

“Carly, I’ve not been transparent with you. I’ve got amnesia. I don’t know what happened to me or how I went missing. It could be innocent, it could be deliberate, I could be a victim here, but the military don’t know that, and I can’t even defend myself or survive interrogation until I manage total recollection. I need time, that’s all I need. So I’m getting out of here before the next team are sent in to complete this assignment. They want me, but I can’t let them have me until I can remember what the fuck went down that sent my entire life down the crapper. I can’t remember anything. My oldest memory is just over four weeks ago. I woke up in Boston, in the middle of a deserted street in the darkest hours of the morning. That’s all I know. I was dressed in civilian clothes, and after I found this file,” I flash it to her from where I left it on the bed, I say, “I’m wealthy, I own property and live in New York. None of this makes sense. I wasn’t dressed like a man with wealth, I wasn’t even dressed to blend in because I was so underdressed for a harsh winter that I’m lucky I didn’t die of exposure.”

“So tell them that!” she argues, sitting up on her knees, gentle hands in my hair, giving comfort when I’ve done nothing but manipulate and exploit this babe.

Shaking my head, my internal alarms pinging off every neuron, I shake my head, “I can’t. They’ll think I’m lying, plus I don’t know if someone tried to assassinate me. Until I know, I’m going dark. And I’m staying dark.”

“How did they find you?” she whimpers, terror and duress feeding off the happy we had, annihilating the comfort and seclusion, our bubble of bliss shredded.

I shrug, because I can’t answer that. “I wish I knew. God damn I wish I knew.”

Mark
:

I can’t stop thinking about Carly. She’s in mortal danger with that thug. He’s so far up the political ladder that he doesn’t exist. That man
doesn’t exist
. He died in combat in 2010. According to the public records he was shipped back in a body bag and buried on Long Island.

There’s just one problem with public record, it’s fucking wrong! He’s very much alive and exceedingly dangerous.

She was my soulmate. I loved her for six long years and the bitch thanked me by alienating my mother and stabbing a dagger in my back during the divorce. I opened her eyes, her body, her mind. I took her to places no man can, and that thug will kill her to hide his secret. No one is supposed to know he’s alive, that makes me think he’s one of those elite operatives like Bond. He answers to the top, has unlimited resources, and nothing of his can be tracked or traced because it violates national security.

My true love is in danger and I’m the only one who knows. Screw this for a cup of tea, I’m going to the house. I’ll shoot him. The dead should stay dead. She’s humping a ghost. A tall, ape of a man, the kind who puts the rest of us to the curb because he’s just so fucking perfect and now he’s with my Carly, him and his wake of destruction. If he’s a soldier she’s screwing a murderer, a paid killer, the elite cream at the top of the military chain. Those men don’t just kill one or two men in their lifetimes, they do it every day, mass destruction in enemy territory, even on home soil for all I know.

Agitated, I can’t sit here fretting another minute. Running upstairs I head to my study, unlocking the safe and withdrawing my hunting rifle.

“What are you doing?” the whore asks from behind me, giving me heart failure.

Spinning to face her while I’m dizzy with surprise, I snap, “I’m going hunting.”

“Now?” she scowls, absently rubbing her beach ball stomach.

It’s revolting trying to screw a woman who looks like she swallowed a pumpkin. I should start calling her Cinderella.

Every time I look at her I’m reminded who she’s not. I’m reminded that I hate her and just want to cover her in bodily functions, chain her up and keep her out of sight so I don’t have to suffer her petulant whining and sulks.

“Carrie, you give me that face and I swear to the holy mother I’ll punch it in. I’m not in the mood. I don’t owe you answers, what I do is none of your fucking business. You got what you wanted, a prestigious husband. Now get the fuck out of my way!”

“When will you be back?” she grumbles, hugging the wall as if it’ll make her flat and invisible.

There’s no hiding the beached whale in this room. “Just fuck off.”

“Mark! Christmas is in four days! I thought deer season was in spring?”

“What you think is dangerous. Don’t think, don’t speak, don’t worry your pea brain or open your stupid pie-hole. Just don’t Carrie, because every time you do you just remind me HOW FUCKING BRAIN DEAD YOU ARE!”

She starts shaking, abject misery her new look. Emo goth must be the fashion this season because she’s been doing this shit a lot. I even read a cunting book on pregnancy and there are women who do everything when pregnant. She should visit the Amish, or the Mormons. The woman chops the wood, farms the food, preserves the food, does bloody everything if it’s ‘home soil’, and when her man gets home there’s a hot meal and love waiting for him, even when her baby is overdue her duties are fulfilled.

Not me. I’ve got no such luck. Sometimes I swear I’m cursed.

Pointing my finger at the stupid cow stealing oxygen from the worthy, I remind her, “I went to Harvard, darling. You know what that makes me? A GENIUS! The top of the top go to Harvard, you have to be genius to even be accepted! So shut your mouth until my cock is in it, otherwise just keep that stupid cavity that’s good for nothing but sucking, SHUT.”

Tears bloom and fall and try my withering patience, so I shove past her with the box of bullets and the weapon still in its zipped up bag, rushing to the bedroom to grab my outdoor gear.

Carly might’ve gone to the cabin to get away from xmas, and if she is I’ll be heading into Maine and freezing my nuts off.

“Go to Mumsy’s!” I yell behind me, already geared for a few days away. A week max.

Mumsy will sort Carrie out. A few days with her and Carrie will be cleaning the floor with her hair, eating on the floor next to the dogs because she chews with her mouth open.